German billionaire and Nazi heir Flick dies at 79

BERLIN, Oct 6 (Reuters) German billionaire Friedrich Karl Flick, the controversial heir to one of the richest businessmen of the Nazi era, has died aged 79.

Flick, whose business dealings sparked a major political scandal in West Germany in the mid-1980s, died at his home by the Woerthersee lake in southern Austria yesterday night, his asset manager Joerg-Andreas Lohr said today.

Flick was the youngest son of industrialist and Nazi supporter Friedrich Flick, whose vast business empire exploited thousands of slave labourers under Adolf Hitler's regime.

Indicted at the Nuremberg Trials, the elder Flick was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 7 years in prison. He rebuilt his firm after an early release in 1951, and refused to pay compensation to forced labourers up to his death in 1972.

Friedrich Karl inherited the biggest share of his father's empire and it was the sale of part of the holdings which lay at the heart of the corruption scandal which engulfed the West German political establishment in 1980s.

In 1975, the Flick group sold a stake in carmaker Daimler-Benz worth nearly 2 billion deutschemarks (about 0 million then). It then applied for and was granted relief on most of the 1 billion deutschemark tax bill.

Six years later it emerged that Flick's company had made illegal cash payments to lawmakers from all West Germany's main parties throughout the 1970s. Senior government ministers and industry figures lost their jobs in the ensuing probe.

The corruption scandal, which threatened to embroil former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was described as ''Bonn's Watergate'' by a leading newspaper, and Flick was dubbed ''The man who bought the Republic''. However, he was never convicted of any wrongdoing.

In 1985 he sold the family business and in 1994 moved to Austria, later taking on Austrian citizenship.

Flick's assets were estimated in recent years to be worth between .1 billion and .9 billion. He is survived by his third wife and four children.

The Flick family made headlines several years ago when Friedrich Christian, the deceased's nephew and a noted art collector, attempted to display his collection in Zurich.

Jewish groups denounced him at the time for failing to pay compensation to forced labourers and some Nazi victims' organisations said ''blood money'' had financed his collection.

Swiss authorities prevented the exhibition going ahead and after Flick made an 8 million euro contribution to a Berlin museum, it opened in the German capital in September 2004.

REUTERS DKB BST2055